


what happens to the hero, after they win?

by alynshir



Category: Kingdoms of Amalur
Genre: Angst, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-27
Updated: 2020-02-27
Packaged: 2021-02-22 14:54:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22917925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alynshir/pseuds/alynshir
Summary: (an old piece, written in likely 2015, edited here and now)the fateless one reunites with a certain assassin some time after the events of the battle of mel senshir. it's not ideal.
Relationships: Fateless One/Alyn Shir
Comments: 1
Kudos: 11





	what happens to the hero, after they win?

_A villa. Just for little old me. Sweet._

Not that Niamh could really see the place very well at all. Something about fighting spiders in close quarters with slavering fangs oozing venom tended to do that, she noticed, as she pressed her hand harder against her side to stem the warm stickiness from seeping through her armor too much. Damn bloodstains always sucked, especially getting out of leather. She forced herself forwards through the dark, echoing hall. Or maybe it was light and quiet. Who knew? Not her.

“Ah, you,” she heard one of the gnomes say, voice swamped with what felt like derision. Although Niamh found herself more focused on whether the gnome was actually that short. Did gnomes even exist, really? Were they a figment of her imagination? She’d dreamt up less strange things than a gnome before during fevers; perhaps this too was a fever dream and she was unconscious in a gully after that last Kobold fight. She’d fought so many Kobolds. Why had she thought that was a good idea again? Had she even?

Niamh squinted down at the gnome, wrinkling her nose in confusion. The tiny person’s mouth was moving, and there was a distinct sound coming from it, but for the life of her she couldn’t figure out whether he was saying words or just making noise for no reason.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” she finally deciphered, but before she could applaud her own intelligence, the walls of the villa tilted violently to the left. Niamh’s heart nearly exploded out of her chest - or at least, it felt that way, and and she felt shards of glass and her own voice claw up her throat in a painful, strangled sound as she stumbled, her head swimming as she keeled to one side. Broad, callused hands grasped at her arm, tugging at her. “Easy does it.”

“What happened to her?” a voice said, a far away voice that Niamh could barely hear. It was a familiar one, one that smoothed down the edges in her mind if only just for a second.

“Shir,” the gnome said, or perhaps swore - did gnomes have special swears? Was Shir one of them? Could Niamh use it? The gnome and the other voice were silent, tense, and then the old gnome sighed. “Don’t know,” he said, his voice suddenly looming over her. “She just got here. Stared at me for a bit, nearly fell over, did fall over.”

“She’s bleeding,” the voice stated, much closer now, a huff of irritation pushing through nostrils Niamh knew must have flared. Cool hands, but not hands - gloves? - touched her neck, her forehead, and Niamh nearly whimpered with relief at the sensation. The cold was welcome against her flesh, which felt suddenly like an inferno, but like a whisper they were gone again and Niamh had to resist cringing in pain. “You’re supposed to be a healer, are you not? Do something.”

Do something? What were they going to do? She was barely even hurt! She was fine! No, nobody touch her, _nobody touch me…_

“No,” Niamh said suddenly, pushing at the floor or the wall or whatever cold surface she noticed her cheek was pressed against. The world wavered in warning, but she tried to ignore it. “No. Fuck off. I can handle it.”

“No, you can’t.”

Niamh squinted at the source of the voice, trying as hard as she could to focus her gaze on their face. Not a gnome, taller, longer, ‘longlegs’ like the gnome from earlier had called her. Darkness and a scowl and a shine she assumed was light glinting off of metal, and she had to suppress a shudder. There had been another with those adjectives, and he had nearly killed her only a few days ago. Or perhaps it had been weeks. Or years. She could still smell the rot of his breath, though, and she flinched when the person reached to touch her again.

“Fuck off, I mean it!” she said - or had she shouted -, skittering back as far as she could. A dull, deep ache throbbed petulantly in her side and her arm and her legs, both legs, but she ignored them too. “Leave it!” The gnome moved towards her as the dark armored figure recoiled slowly. Her vision swam; had he grown extra arms? That seemed...bad. Her heart skipped and pounded, erratic in her throat. She remembered things with extra arms. She could still feel their talons ripping at her. “Don’t touch me, you…potato bug.”

The gnome blur stopped, turning to the dark armored figure, who made a strange sound behind what Niamh figured were lips pressed together to hide a more honest noise. Niamh sank back onto the cold floor - for a floor it must have been -, squeezing her eyes closed. Maybe they’d go away if she wished hard enough.

“Milou is your name?”

The gnome gave a grunt that Niamh assumed was in the affirmative.

“I’ll take her from here. She’ll apologise later for that, I’m sure,” the voice assured, although Niamh disagreed with any notion of apology. She hadn’t started it, after all.

“Fucking...bugs have too many arms. So do niskaru. Go away. bug,” Niamh found herself mumbling, bitter as she eyed the gnome blur through narrowed eyes. “Too many arms.”

“I know,” the voice sighed, as if it heard this sort of thing from her every day. Niamh felt twin tugs under her arms, lifting her up, trying to force her to stand on legs that all but howled in protest. She twisted her shoulders, a short, rough jerk of a movement that sent her thudding the short distance back to the unforgiving floor. A grunt of pain escaped her lips, and the dark armored figure - she assumed - huffed and slipped their gloved, small hands underneath her arms again, this time managing to heave Niamh to her feet before she realised what was happening.

“Let go,” she growled, trying to yank herself free of the armored figure’s grip once again. The person slung their arms underneath hers and latched tight around the girth of Niamh’s arm, metal-tipped gloves digging into her aching, injured shoulders.

“You may be able to fight a gnome off, but not me,” the voice sighed, ever exasperated. Niamh scowled, or at least, it felt as if she had.

“Yeah? Try me. We can fight if you wanna,” Niamh challenged. Although she didn’t recognise the dark armored figure lugging her up stairs that clipped her limp, dragging ankles painfully. Nevertheless, she could still practically hear the eyeroll.

“Stop flailing,” the voice insisted, irritation strongly present in their voice. “You’re heavy enough as it is.”

Niamh squirmed more in retaliation, perhaps to make a point, but regretted it instantly when the person dragged her carelessly over what felt like a threshold. The wooden ridge slammed into Niamh’s ankle with a vengeance, and the agonized groan that left Niamh’s throat sounded more like it belonged to some Sidhe-beast than to an elf of Niamh’s stature. Niamh’s head was still spinning from the fresh wave of pain atop the motley yowling of the other wounds, and wetness coursed down her cheeks unbidden. By the time she found herself able to think past the throbbing pain, she found the figure attempting to ease their arms out from under Niamh’s without the elf collapsing to the floor like a sack of potatoes.

“Sit down,” the figure ordered, short of breath. When Niamh didn’t answer save for a pained, angry grunt, the person’s figurative eyes - Niamh assumed they had eyes, anyways - narrowed. “Niamh. Sit down.”

“I am sitting,” Niamh pointed out.

The person sighed. “No, you’re not.”

“Oh.”

“Bend your knees.” For good measure, the person tapped Niamh’s left knee. The action was surprisingly helpful - Niamh had been halfway through bending her elbows. She thought they were her elbows, anyways.

The person gave her a gentle push and Niamh felt herself fall back against a soft, squishy surface - a bed perhaps, or a dragon without scales. Niamh was willing to bet it was the dragon, but somehow she didn’t think it would be a dragon when she went to collect her money.

“Just stay there for a moment,” the shadowed figure ordered, and Niamh grunted irritably, although her screaming limbs seemed to agree wholeheartedly with the person. They turned away, and Niamh wondered if they were a woman. They sounded like one, but that was nothing to base her assumption off of. They had small hands and a light step, Niamh thought, unless her perception was truly so off that she couldn’t tell. This also was nowhere near solid evidence saying her assailant/healer was a woman, but it perhaps was a start. Even the gnome bug, as small as he was, had a heavier step than this person.

“Drink this.” Niamh felt a cool, rounded glass opening press lightly against her lips, an indication of its presence.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Poison,” the person replied, voice flat and bored, as if they were discussing taxes or the underwear of someone named Agarth.

“And here I thought you liked me,” Niamh mumbled. “Go and get concerned about me bleeding out, then poison me. Figures.”

“Drink,” the person insisted, a sliver of desperation sneaking into their voice unbidden, and Niamh reluctantly parted her lips, allowing the person to tip the contents of what she guessed was a glass vial down her throat. The supposed ‘poison’ was spicy and sweet, cinnamon and hearthfire in liquid form, and Niamh coughed a few times, her eyes crossing and drifting closed. She shuddered as the liquid burned through her veins, but sighed in relief as the liquid hearthfire left only blissful coolness behind.

“Shit,” she said after a few minutes, putting a hand to her head and wincing at the stretch of taut, freshly-knit skin. She looked up slowly. “Alyn?”

“You sound surprised,” the brunette Dokkalfar observed, turning away from the boudoir and approaching Niamh. Niamh drank the sight in nearly as greedily as she did the goblet of water that Alyn offered her, expression neutral.

“I…maybe.” Niamh went to shrug, and hissed as her shoulders resisted the motion. “Ow. What the fuck.”

“Your fever was very high. I’m surprised you didn’t need more potions. But you’ve always been unpredictable,” Alyn said, a slight quirk tugging at a corner of her full lips for a single heartrending second before it gave way to seriousness. “So tell me. What happened to you?” Alyn asked, concern barely coating her voice.

At a guess, Niamh would hazard that if she were to look up, aforementioned missing concern would be easily located in the other elf’s stormy eyes. However, she chose not to look up, instead choosing to glance down at her hands with the pretense of examining the freshly healed finger on her left hand. Apparently bones broke like blades just the same if you hit things too much with them; who knew.

“Nothing happened,” Niamh said, shrugging again and biting down hard on her bottom lip in an attempt to muffle the exclamation of pain that threatened to breach her throat.

“Arms up,” Alyn said, and Niamh squinted at her before folding her arms across her chest defensively.

“No.”

“Niamh…” Alyn’s voice grew harder, more insistent, and Niamh scowled, hugging herself tighter - a bad idea in the end, as her apparently cracked rib made itself known to her.

“Saying my name won’t make me do shit,” Niamh said through her gritted teeth as she gingerly eased herself into a less constricting position. Her filthy, rusted armor jostled against the injury, and Niamh hissed again.

“What are you trying to hide?” Alyn asked curiously, somehow managing to recline on a simple wooden stool that she must have put beside Niamh’s current resting place. “The blood is in plain sight, and even if I couldn’t see it, I could smell it.” She wrinkled her nose. “Your armor is offending every sense I have. And…” She reached out, batting at Niamh’s head. Her gloved hands came away covered in shimmering white strands mixed with the dark brown of Niamh’s hair, matted together with a faint green ooze. “You have spiderwebs in your hair.”

“Ew,” Niamh said, rapidly tugging at the halfhearted restraints tying her hair back and running her hands through her hair rapidly.

“Your hair’s gotten longer,” Alyn commented. Niamh glanced up at her through the newfound mess of brown waves.

“Not much of a reason to cut it, is there? Is there a dress-code I need to have now, as the Hero of Mel Senshir?”

Both of them pretended to ignore the crack in Niamh’s voice at the mocking announcement of her newfound title.

“Arms up,” Alyn repeated again after a moment, and Niamh complied. “Thank you.”

As Alyn deftly and easily removed the sweaty, dirty leather and chainmail, Niamh smirked. “This is scandalous,” she said after a moment, as Alyn hooked her fingers under Niamh’s ruined tunic and eased it off over her shoulders, leaving her torso only clad in a breastband.

“Oh, yes. Very,” Alyn agreed absently. She reached out, lightly prodding a spot on Niamh’s exposed ribcage, below her breastband. Niamh yelped.

“Hey!” she exclaimed, pulling away from Alyn.

“Are you and your broken rib still scandalised?” Alyn asked, raising one perfectly arched eyebrow. Niamh scoffed, and then hesitated.

“Why are you even here?” she asked, and although it was quite subtle, even for Alyn’s masterful level of subtlety, Niamh noticed the reinforced neutrality in Alyn’s voice as the woman stood up, making her way back over to the boudoir and retrieving another of the small glass vials.

“I had business to see to here,” she said, by way of what Niamh defined as an absolutely boring, vague, and completely bullshit excuse. She’d at least expected something more entertaining.

“Right,” she said slowly, raising her own eyebrows skeptically as Alyn fiddled with strips of white cloth. “And you just happened to walk into my specific villa seconds after me?”

Alyn leaned forward, carefully tying the first strip of cloth tightly around Niamh’s ribs, nearly overlapping the lowest part of the breastband. Niamh didn’t dare to take a breath, for more reason than 'it might hurt’. _After all, it isn't every day I have a beautiful woman between my breasts, right,_ she could hear herself saying, but it was probably more than that. Or something.

“Mere coincidence,” she deferred, her gaze trained on something closer to Niamh’s hip than her injured rib. “Stop pulling away.”

“You’re prodding me!” Niamh protested.

“I’m prodding a pus-filled boil I intend to take care of,” Alyn clarified testily, looking up, “unless you’d rather me let it be.”

“Why do you have gloves on?” Niamh asked after a bit, eyeing the unfamiliar dark coverings dubiously.

“Because I don’t enjoy bodily fluids all over me in most circumstances,” Alyn answered, dabbing at the boil with a damp cloth smelling strongly of cinnamon and hearthfire. Niamh sighed in slight relief as the affliction’s throbbing pain ebbed. “Any more questions?”

“Only most circumstances?”

_“Niamh.”_

“Why are you making that face?” Niamh asked after an appropriate pause for the ambient banter to switch gears. She had noticed some sort of uncomfortable, nervous twitch of the lips and narrowing of the eyes - for just a moment, but she had seen it.

“I don’t make faces,” Alyn said, returning to wrapping the strips of white around Niamh’s ribs.

“You just did,” Niamh argued, but Alyn wasn’t having any of it, instead knotting the final strip of white and pulling herself back onto the stool from before.

“I’ll ask you again. And I want an answer. What happened to you?” Alyn asked, her voice low and insistent.

“Nothing.”

“This 'nothing’ seems pretty dangerous when you put it that way,” Alyn said, pursing her lips.

“Nothing!” Niamh insisted, her voice cracking. “There were things to fight! Normal nothing!”

“You’ve fought your way across the Sidhe with not even a scratch to show for it,” Alyn said, irritation rising through her net of neutrality. “The only things out here are spiders and Kobolds.”

“And bandits,” Niamh added. “Bandits and spiders and Kobolds, oh my.”

“You’ve fought the Balor,” Alyn pointed out. “The Balor.”

“Yeah,” Niamh said, a small knot tying itself neatly in the bottom of her stomach. “I did.”

“You went missing for weeks after Mel Senshir,” Alyn said after a moment, something darkening her voice. Niamh fancied it was worry and concern for her well-being. “Off the map. Nobody had any idea where you went, where you were going, and whether you had ever made it.”

“So that’s why you’re here,” Niamh realised belatedly. “Niamh-hunt.”

“Nobody knew where to find you.”

“Not my fault everyone’s stupid.”

“Then you turn up in Adessa, half dead.”

“I prefer to think of it as half _alive_ ,” Niamh corrected, and Alyn sighed, dropping her hands into her lap.

“What were you thinking?” she asked.

“I was thinking…I really wanted to hit things,” Niamh said finally, and from the series of motions Alyn’s eyebrows made, Niamh knew her curiosity hadn’t been sated in the least.

“Beyond that,” Alyn pressed. “Besides, from what I’ve seen, you always want to hit things.”

“True,” Niamh agreed, grinning. Alyn leaned forward slightly, not returning the smile.

“You vanished. Why?”

Niamh shrugged, and Alyn sat back, her face hardening.

“Don’t lie.”

Niamh sighed, and the tremor she heard in her own sound did not go unnoticed by the other elf.

“Mel Senshir sucked,” she said eventually, after a pause that felt both too short and too long.

“That much is obvious,” Alyn agreed, confusion mixing with her irritation. “But we won in the end.”

“Yeah. You did. I did. General Whatshisface did.” Niamh found herself having to swallow down some sort of emotion she didn’t much care for. “Tilera didn’t.”

“So this is about Tilera’s death,” Alyn mused after a while, sitting back.

“It’s not about anything,” Niamh insisted, on most likely deaf ears.

“Tilera didn’t lose,” Alyn said, and Niamh made a strange sound.

“She’s dead, Alyn!” she exclaimed. “Very dead! Like, super duper dead. The not-coming back variety!”

“Her death brought our victory.”

Niamh exhaled sharply.

“She wouldn’t be dead if I…”

_The Sun Spear, held in the Great General’s hands, a bright victory bathed in Niskaru blood. She smiles at you, true, thankful, unharmed, hopeful, and you think for a moment, a moment, perhaps… something might turn out well, someone might win. Maybe this Great General will usher hope into your heart, amongst the hearts of many. You look at her, golden armor, golden spear, golden hair, golden heart, and you think maybe this time, you’ll win._

“If you what? Didn’t bring her to Rathir? To Mel Senshir?” Alyn guessed.

“Hadn’t done shit,” Niamh said, looking down at her hands. She had a new scar across her back of her hand from the Witch-King’s blade parrying a mistimed swipe with the faeblades. “Maybe I could’ve just taken the spear and run off and done it without her.”

“She would have lived out her remaining days as the failure she believed herself to be before you showed up,” Alyn said, and then she hesitated, eyeing Niamh consideringly and taking Niamh’s scarred hand to ostensibly examine the wound before she continued speaking, looking down. “And you would have died.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Niamh agreed, “but she wouldn’t have.”

“And that is somehow better?” Alyn said slowly, looking up with disbelief frank in her voice as well as her features. Niamh shrugged.

“I’m an obscurity. She’s a hero. It’s a pretty easy choice. If it were me, I’d save the hero over someone I don’t know.”

“Most heroes start out as obscurities,” Alyn reasoned, and then when Niamh shrugged dismissively - Niamh, a hero? Bullshit - she huffed. “You can’t keep running from fate forever, Niamh.”

Niamh snorted, an ugly sound made sniffly and wet from the earlier, unbidden tears.

“I don’t have that, remember? I’m the Fateless One.” Niamh shook her hands dramatically in the air, and winced, but continued nevertheless. “That’s kind of my brand.”

“You have a fate,” Alyn said. “Mine is woven, and Agarth’s is, and Tilera’s was. Yours isn’t. It’s up to you to weave. Unravel one thread, and you can unravel some of the rest in ways you never imagined.”

Niamh shrugged her shoulders for what felt like the hundredth time, a cursory smirk with no joy motivating it.

“I accidentally ruined someone’s tapestry, then,” she said, unapologetic. “Oopsies.”

Alyn rolled her eyes.

“Yes, Tilera died indirectly because you led her to Mel Senshir,” she conceded, “but she died in glory, in battle, doing what was right for her people. If you hadn’t interfered -”

“Do you see her choke on her own blood every night?” Niamh interrupted, abrupt and flat.

Alyn drew back, caught off guard. “What?”

“Do you see General Tilera spewing up globs of her own guts, half collapsed on the ground every time you close your eyes?” Niamh elaborated, slow and purposeful as she met Alyn’s gaze. The look on the Dokkalfar’s face was answer enough, and Niamh drew back, pulling her hand out of Alyn’s cursory grasp.

“Didn’t think so. She didn’t go out in a blaze of glory,” Niamh said, a wave of something abominable rising within her chest, something that made her feel sick and angry. “She could barely lift the stupid Sun…Thing. Someone shot her.”

By the flash of surprise that shone for a moment in Alyn’s eyes, Niamh guessed Alyn hadn’t been privy to such information - something she wondered if the woman was used to. She wondered if anyone else in the world knew of their General’s true demise. “Then she threw the spear. It was a bad throw. And then she dragged herself over to it and threw it again so it didn’t suck. And then she died.” Niamh’s throat felt like someone had made her swallow glue. “And I couldn’t do shit about it. I could’ve. Me with my game-changing, right?” Niamh offered a smile as false as they came. “But I couldn’t.”

Alyn was quiet for a few beats.

“Just because your fate doesn’t have an end has nothing to do with other people’s,” she said slowly, an emotion that Niamh couldn’t quite put a finger on, touching her face. Not disdain, not anger, not boredom, and not one of the rare but beautiful smirks of genuine amusement. She hadn’t thought Alyn Shir possessed any other masks in her collection of expressions. “Some threads are only so long.”

“Stop speaking in metaphors,” Niamh sighed, the wave of…whatever this was, this bitter, this fire, this prismere venom - resurging through her chest.

Alyn gave her a look nearly akin to pity. “Niamh…”

“Don’t Niamh me!” Niamh snapped, and she didn’t realise she was shouting until Alyn’s ears twitched away noticeably at the sound. “You can’t just 'Niamh’ things away! What’s your fucking problem? You’re not in my head. You don’t control what I do or feel. Stop talking like it was nothing. Don’t touch me! Leave me the fuck alone.”

The room stood still, and for a flicker of a heartbeat Niamh regretted speaking. The regret vanished in the next heartbeat as Alyn stood and turned to the door in one fluid movement.

“I’ll be on my way.”

“Good.”

(Niamh wondered, the next day, as she cringed at the new, tight skin as it pulled and as she examined the scar on her hand, if the entire debacle had all been but another fever dream.)


End file.
